New ISSF Athletes Committee: message to all athletes
Dear Fellow Athletes,
Greetings from the ISSF Athletes Committee! We are grateful to all of you for the trust
you have put in us with our recent election.
At the very outset, we would like to reiterate that athletes are at the
heart of the ISSF and our goal is to make the Athletes Committee an inclusive
open forum.
All suggestions, ideas and concepts will be given due weight and will be
discussed in a transparent democratic fashion at the meetings of the ISSF
Athletes Committee. The first meeting is scheduled for early 2015. We would
like everyone to empower themselves and enrich us with their rich experience.
Being athletes, we want our community's concerns to be of prime importance and
would request all of you to communicate and help make a more inclusive
organization.
The members of the ISSF Athletes
Committee are present during most ISSF supervised competitions. Please also
feel free to communicate with us at all times by email to
athletes@issf-sports.org.
Abhinav Bindra in the line of fire
Dec 02 2016 By indianshooting.com
India’s only individual Olympic gold-medallist,
rifle shooter Abhinav Bindra, is facing severe criticism by some of the best
known names in the international shooting community after the International
Shooting Sport Federation’s (ISSF) Athletes Committee, which he heads,
recommended to drop Men’s 50m Rifle Prone, 50m Pistol and Double Trap from the
2020 Tokyo Olympic curriculum.
The ISSF is taking the drastic step to maintain
“gender equality” in Olympic programme, which means equal number of events for
both men and women at the mega event.
However, the move has angered and anguished the
top marksmen in the world, many of whom are castigating Bindra and publicly
venting their anger against the Athletes Committee recommendations on social
networking sites.
Miroslav Varga, gold-medallist in 50m rifle prone at the 1988
Olympics in Seoul and who represented the Czech Republic at the 2008 Beijing
Games where Bindra won gold, went to the extent of saying that Bindra is on the
bad side. He wrote, “Dear Abhinav, I think you are on the bad side.”
Norway’s Harald
Stenvaag, winner of two Olympic medals and a three-time world champion in
10m Air Rifle, 50m Prone and 50m Three Position events, has termed the
recommendations “the worst decision”. “Bindra, this is the worst decision ever
made in ISSF. I have been a shooter my whole life, winning World Championship
in almost every rifle discipline. I would say that I have the experience also
to see the bigger picture. This is absolutely not a collective
recommendation…It’s easy to see which two from the athletes community voted to
remove prone. Now, the Olympic dream of thousands of prone shooters worldwide
is crossed. By disappointing the largest group of shooters worldwide it might
make birth of the “World Prone-Shooting Federation,” says Stenvaag.
Former World Champion and winner of 32 World
Cup medals, Sidi Peter of Hungary
wrote, “Nobody takes responsibility…Nobody says “I made that decision”…Just lie
behind and pushing away the responsibility. Those people just represent
themselves…They don’t care about us.”
Junior world record holder in prone, Iordache Dragomir of Romania wrote,
“In my opinion, “that” Athletes Committee doesn’t represent our voice. If we
were represented by them, our opinions should be important for ISSF. I am the
only one who thinks that Mr. Bindra doesn’t have the courage to send our
message to the President and votes for vanishing prone and free pistol from the
Olympic Program? It sounds very strange, but all the arguments used by Abhinav
are so groundless and without any sense.”
Bindra in his defence has said that he is “not
the driving force behind any decision”. “Just for everybody’s information I’m
not the driving force behind any decision. It’s a collective recommendation
which is due to be taken up by the executive committee and admin council. You
can all be rest assured I will voice all your concerns and thoughts as I have
always done,” Bindra clarified.
But one of the legends of shooting, Rajmond Debevec, is not convinced. The
Slovenian shooter, winner of three Olympic and five World Championship medals
and record holder in 50m rifle three-positions, says, “I am aware of Agenda
2020 (Tokyo Olympics) recommendation and I support gender equality, but haven’t
had a chance to see any official IOC (International Olympic Committee) document
preferring neither air rifle towards prone nor air pistol towards free pistol.
“It would be really sad if IOC puts pressure to
the ISSF and insists in any kind of demands without any written documents. If
there exist such a document, then the ISSF should post it in public,” says
Debevec.
“I really feel the AC (Athletes Committee)
didn’t do its work properly in this case. In my opinion the decision was made
without consideration of thousands and thousands of prone and free pistol
shooters with their dreams to come true once to participate in OG (Olympic
Games).
“As the ISSF decision is known and the
recommendation was supported by AC already, I am afraid the irreparable damage
has been done to our beloved sport,” adds Debevek
Posted by Thom Erik Syrdahl
Source - By indianshooting.com and ISSF Website
